Big Pharma Ripoffs on Cancer Patients Makes 60 Minutes

How much would you pay for a year of life? It seems Big Pharma has figured that number out and are charging over $100,000 a year for life saving Cancer drugs. Yes, surprise, surprise, the more dire the disease, the more the great for profit pharmaceutical industry is charging for the cure. In 2012 alone, of the 12 cancer drugs approved by the FDA, 11 cost over $100,000. A king's ransom for a breath of life. Who would not pay it in order to stay alive?

The 60 Minutes segment exposing the ripoff prices is called The Cost of Cancer Drugs. 60 Minutes not only reveals the outrageous cost of Cancer drugs but also how the Doctor's themselves make big profits by prescribing the most expensive ones to their patients. Here is the video segment below.

Dr. Leonard Saltz: And remember that many of these drugs, most of them, don't replace everything else. They get added to it. And if you figure one drug costs $120,000 and the next drug's not going to cost less, you're at a quarter-million dollars in drug costs just to get started.

Lesley Stahl: I mean, you're dealing with people who are desperate.

While these drugs are expensive globally, the United States is the only industrialized nation getting taken to the cleaners to this degree. The lie to the American people is these prices are incentive to innovate that they are necessary for innovation. Somehow profits motivate someone to invent. Just ask Dr. Jonas Salk about his polio vaccine, the gift he gave to the public free of charge, what a lie that is. Of course sociopathic entities cannot grasp altruism and empathy. We're all Ferengi now.

The most outrageous thing is the Obama administration and Congress had a chance to stop pharmaceutical companies putting a gun to people's head with their your money or your life drug prices. But the administration did not just do nothing. They took the payola from drug companies and stopped government even being allowed to negotiate drug prices. Yes, our politicians wrote into law that America must be suckers and subjugated to runaway drug prices set by big Pharma.

The ripoff prices for these drugs are just that as prices have increased over time for the most effective drugs. There is no increased research, no additional expenses to produce the drug.

Gleevec, from Novartis, possibly the greatest cancer drug ever invented, cost $24,000 a year when it was introduced in 2001; now it costs $90,000 per year, a quadrupling in price.

This isn't the first expose on the pharmaceutical industry's profiteering on people's desperation to stay alive. Earlier Bloomberg also piped up. Yet people without Medicine have a tendency to die which is once again very convenient for Big Pharma. There are few people left to testify before Congress or who attempt to sue the drug companies.

Earl Harford, a retired professor who lives in Tucson, recently bought a month’s worth of the pills he needs to keep his leukemia at bay. The cost: $7,676, three times more than when he began taking the pills in 2001. Over the years he’s paid more than $140,000 of his retirement savings to cover his share of the drug’s price. “People with this condition are being taken advantage of by the pharmaceutical industry,” says Harford. “They haven’t improved the drug; they haven’t done anything but keep manufacturing it. How do they justify it?”

Robert Thanks for bringing this to our attention. If that is upsetting, allow me to really make your blood boil. Before I came to economic theory I stumbled into a very troubling aspect of medical statistics. With the help of a courageous national reporter it became a national award winning story, but it was focused on a one particular "wonder drug". The key concept of the story is called Number Needed to Treat (NNT). It basically the ineffectiveness of drugs and surgery (not just Big Pharma). But don't an engineer's word for it...watch this TEDx by Dr. Newman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCk_vTkS6bU If this stirs your curiosity see the website I believe Newman is involved with: thennt.com . And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The potential for cost reform based on minimum NNT (performance standard) is tremendous in my view. I will try to reach 60 min producer, becauses it needs to be revisited in a broader scope.

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Look around the world today, if I called out the glaringly obviously lies and bullsh*t I personally have seen or deal with or been subjected to, I'd lose my sh*t 5,000 times daily. Yes, 5,000 times DAILY! Politics, corruption, business, globally, here and everywhere, who cares. This crap is so obvious in 2014 that I don't need "60 Minutes" to explain things to me. Where are the entire broadcasts on how people are dying because of bankster and political corruption? Suicides by people of all ages? Wars after wars after wars while Americans can't afford to battle cancer or diabetes or anything else with their insurance plans (which are even now more expensive than ever). It's wretched, sick, and getting worse. Where are the stories about how shadowstats tells the truth while the BLS is BS? And on. And on. And on.

By the way, F "60 Minutes" and the rest of the propaganda posing as investigative journalism or news. If I see one more piece by "60 Minutes" telling America how we need the FBI or NSA or DIA to spy on us to prevent terrorism and it's all good, well, I'll vomit even more than I do. If I see one more piece posing as news in which Apple or Spanx or Berkshire pose as American ingenuity I'll lose my mind yet again. Please! Do you think Paine and Jefferson and Madison and Franklin dreamt of USA in which OUR GOVERNMENT used mass media to convince us that spying on us was good for us or well-connected douches are oh so smart and gifted? America, Paine weeps for what we have become. "60 Minutes"? The MSM? Corporate-owned douches. Trust me when I say they go only so far as they are allowed in private meetings before airtime. Big pharma no doubt cleared any stories before they were aired, after all, CBS ain't gonna risk anything when its board of directors and officers and the politicians it pays/controls have anything to lose. If one officer at CBS might risk one $1,000 dinner, then by God the story would not air. Nope, it's all been vetted and cleared for our consumption. Thank you Big Brother, thank you.

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Long time no see. Yes, it is incredible. Right now in Oregon, labeling GMO foods had a 77% win, so of course Monsanto has been running "ads" to vote no, pure spin and lies, but 24/7, every 10 minutes and now measure 92 has a 50-50 polling. Unbelievable. Marketing works and people are stupid! Why whoever has the most cash wins for anyone with half a brain would want to make it be law that we must know what is in our food, country of original, GMO, etc.

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Hi-Lex Controls, an automotive technology company, took Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to court in 2013 after becoming suspicious that the company had been systematically cheating it over 19 years. After reviewing evidence in the case, a judge ordered the insurance company stop charging the hidden fees — and order it to pay Hi-Lex Controls $6.1 million. An actuary from the consulting firm Milliman Inc. testified under oath that many other insurers engaged in the same practices.